Notches
by Rashaka
Summary: Collection of One-Shots for Jeff/Annie. Prompt: "What if Abed hadn't stopped Jeff and Annie from angrily undressing during the pen incident?" J/A/B triangle.
1. Break It Down

I've written a huge amount of drabbles, flashfics, and shorts for Jeff/Annie in the last year and a half, and those stories need a home**: Notches.** In mostly chronologically written order.

****

**Warnings:** Jeff/Annie, floppy-haired behavior, spoilers for eps 1x24 & 1x25**  
****Rating:** T for Too Many Metaphors**  
****Genre:** Vignette, General, Character Piece**  
****Disclaimer:** Not my characters, now or in any future fic.****

**Summary:** Jeff's changing relationship to Annie over the season._ (Oh God, I promise it's not as boring as that sounds.)_

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

** Break It Down (For Me)**

.

To the dismay of the study group and the delight of nearby gawkers, the night of the Greendale First Annual Tranny Dance was turning into one of those horrid "finale" encounters that seem unavoidable when a year's ended and relationships are tested. Jeff wasn't sure he'd ever had one of these "episodes" before, and maybe he could blame Abed for the fact that he was having one now. The problem with seeing the world through Abed's spy glasses, however, was that sometimes reality and fiction could look a lot like one another without being similar at all.

For instance, there was the masculine side of romance. TV shows and books always bemoaned how guys felt uncontrollably hormonal around the ladies. They couldn't help wanting to grab them or kiss them, all the time and any time, as if a man who desired a woman spent every dreaming minute and about three fourths of the waking ones barely restraining himself from lustful cave-man action. Perhaps even the young Mr. Winger had felt that way from the age of eighteen to twenty-four-ish. But the truth was that Jeff hadn't gotten where he was now (mid-thirties, undereducated, formerly overpaid, bilingual to Greendale standards) by being an emotional guy. Emotions, like ethics, could be compartmentalized.

The filing box in Jeff's brain-slash-soul labeled 'Annie' was a mess of hanging drawers, sealed locks with missing keys, stuffed in papers, and libido subpoenas. Did he think about grabbing her waist as they walked to study group and attaching himself at the lips? Sure he did; for about a week last winter he'd been unable to fantasize about anyone else while jacking off in the shower. But he didn't imagine that every time they talked. Most days in the study room it didn't cross his mind at all. If Jeff thought about her, it was to admire her study ethic or to wish her self-righteous babydoll voice was heckling someone else.

Truthfully, Annie had existed in his initial mental impression as a cute, nervous squirrel who wanted to sidle up one moment and bite your finger the next. Everything about her demanded that she be handled with care, but if he were too careful she sensed it and grew angry at him for underestimating her. She was pretty and out of bounds the way foreign race cars could be pretty and out of reach, until the debate happened and she'd popped onto Jeff's sexual radar like a tank-launched ballistic missile headed straight for his Lexus. The mental filing box for Annie Edison had to be expanded by a few drawers to become a cabinet, some newly uncomfortable and confusing feelings were stuffed inside, and then the whole thing was locked up again for safe keeping. It wasn't an act of denial, because he'd didn't really _pretend_ anything for or against. He simply stopped thinking of her that way when it was clear that it only made both of them uncomfortable. This was not as difficult for Jeff as he suspected it might be for other people; want or need didn't matter if you knew your long-term goal.

The debate wasn't a solitary instance of attraction, because Jeff was still a man and men were neither angels nor robots. While it happened sporadically, it did happen. Every once in a while Annie would catch him off guard with a soft-eyed request or a Freudian slip, and plunge Jeff back through time at radical speed until he was suddenly thinking about her again, _seeing_ her again. He'd flounder for a second, then the second would pass, he or Annie would leave, and he'd put the feeling out of his mind and into a drawer to be dealt with later. If it was obvious to both that they were attracted to each other, then it was equally obvious that social inhibitions were trouncing that attraction into the carpet.

He'd gone a whole year relating to her this way, and as a result he'd managed to earn her friendship without being concerned about getting into her pleated skirt. Jeff reserved all of that effort for Britta-a woman who both required and deserved effort-so his friendship with Annie was easy and, for the most part, uncomplicated. It was probably the least complicated relationship he'd had with a woman in years. Sometimes they were Spanish study buddies, sometimes they were friends, and sometimes she was the group's littlest sister, Jeff's to scold or celebrate as much as anyone else's.

At first, their conversation after the final Spanish exam had seemed just like any of half a dozen awkward moments this year where friendship and honesty got the better of them. In this case he reacted with less reserve than usual because it felt as if she were doing by accident what he was used to women doing on purpose. When Annie mentioned dressing like a professor he'd taken it at face value, only to have her panic at his obliviousness and him panic at her panicking. The communication was so brief-just a few squawking words from either party-that in its wake Jeff was left to wonder if Annie had been nervous because he'd interpreted her comment correctly or because he'd interpreted it incorrectly. Either explanation seemed likely to induce confusion where there had before been clarity, so he decided to ignore it the way he ignored most of their accidental exchanges.

Either time proved the enemy of self-control, however, or Jeff's lawyer instincts decided to step in, because he found himself unable to let go of that moment as easily as he had the rest. Some aspect of it tickled his brain, wiggled around and made a home for itself in the part that organized his aforementioned mental compartments. The moment was unlike the moments before it, and it represented either an aberration or a shift in circumstances. Although trained by the legal culture to think in analytical structures, Jeff's conscious mind didn't conceptualize it so precisely. He just knew that it bugged him, and he knew that figuring out why it bugged him was something he'd have to worry about eventually.

Eventually happened a lot sooner than Jeff expected. Four days later, he realized what had changed with Annie in the hallway in just about the same quarter of a second that he realized she was going to kiss him. They'd stood not far from the brightly decorated site of his most recent emotional failure, and she'd listened while he tried to poor his scraggly heart out to the only woman who hadn't asked to hear about it. Better than judging or advising him, Annie understood what he wanted to express. Jeff was so grateful for a friend that knowing she was back to stay made the whole night survivable again.

Fortified by her faith in him, he made an excuse to leave but didn't, until the urge to stay was greater than the urge to go. They hugged, stepped back, and Annie finally caught his eyes. She moved a centimeter, maybe less. But Jeff was still close-close enough to smell her shampoo-and he _knew_ that move. In a quarter of a second the drawers containing vital details about Annie flew open in his mind, and he knew what had been different about the conversation outside of class. He knew why she had stayed, he knew why she was moving closer, and his eyebrows pulled together as he took no time at all to reassess everything he'd understood about Annie Edison.

Jeff knew it was time, and he closed his eyes.


	2. Call Again

This drabble's based on a prompt for Post-College Jeff/Annie.. It was supposed to be more...more. But didn't.

**Summary:**Jeff Winger hasn't seen Annie Edison in three years.**  
**

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Call Again**

The phone rings, and Jeff wakes up in his desk chair. Moaning, he scrabbles amongst the papers and highlighters, eventually finding his cell buried under a take-out bag.

"Hello?"

_"Jeff! Good. Jeff, I need a lawyer."_

"Wow, and they said Facebook advertising was a waste of time. You called the correct, though puzzlingly _unlisted_ number. It happens that I _am _a lawyer."

_"Uh, yeah, I **know** you're a lawyer, Jeff. I looked you up to check on your progress."_

"I sense we're having two different conversations right now."

There is a moment of silence on the line, then the woman's voice drops in volume and enthusiasm. _"Jeff,"_ she says, like a kitten who'd just been abandoned in thirteen feet of snowbank beside a Target parking lot. _"You...don't remember me?"_

Oh. Aah. _Right._This sensation of lung-punching guilt can only have one source in the known universe.

Three years going and he's still the giant tool that makes Annie Edison cry.


	3. Annoying Couple Arguing at the Rest Stop

This drabble's based on a prompt for a ** Doctor Who** crossover.

**Summary: **Annie and Jeff go time-traveling with the Tenth Doctor.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**That Annoying Couple Arguing at the Rest Stop**

"Annie, please come out." Jeff leaned his head against the door of the blue telephone box, and knocked with the side of his fist. "Just come out!"

"No!" shouted a voice from the inside.

Next to Jeff, an equally tall man in a skinny brown suit tried to look innocuous and helpful at the same time. "It's perfectly safe, promise." He looked at the door, then said it a little louder for Annie's sake.

"That's what you said about the Snaggle Tree Swamp! I should have known from the stupid, scary name! But noooooooooo, you were all 'Oh, Jolly Good, Perfectly Safe For the Wandering Space Hitchhiker Lass,' and I believed you! Because you have a British accent!"

The man in brown frowned at the ex-lawyer. "That's not how I talk." He looked at the door. "I don't talk like that!"

"Annie," said Jeff through the wood, "The Doctor maybe be an annoying travel guide-"

"Oy! Right here."

"-but he doesn't want to kill us. We survived, right? We saved the, the, purple furry things-"

"Hephalumps," encouraged the Doctor.

"-the Hephalumps from extinction. That was pretty fun. And you should see where we are."

At this, Jeff had to pause and actually take stock of the landing site. They appeared to be in some kind of bazaar. "It's a farmer's market, Annie. They're selling food and jewelry and stuff. It's completely harmless."

"An alien farmer's market!"

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Yeah, babe, that's kind of what we signed up for. Look, just come out and...oh crap."

"What?" said Annie's voice, now just behind the door.

Jeff looked right and left for a familiar swirling coat in the crowd, but he saw nothing. "Shit! Not again."

"What is it?"

"The Doctor's gone."

The door to the TARDIS was flung open violently. Annie grabbed the front of Jeff's shirt and pulled his attention down to her. "You_ let_ him _wander off?_"

He shrugged. "You know, it just happened. I turn away for one second and phoof! Vanished. Anyway, he's a grown alien boy, and this is his job. It's his beat, let the man walk it."

Annie dropped her shoulders and looked at Jeff. ...Who held out for about four seconds, then sighed.

"Okay, let's go rescue him."

Annie straightened her shoulders again and swished her hair back. She peered suspiciously at the little ramshackle stands of alien fruit and forty-fourth century purses. "Did you see which way he went?"

The sound of an explosion stole the reply from Jeff's mouth, and the near-simultaneous blast of air knocked both humans to the muddy grass. Lying prone and stunned, Jeff turned his head to one side to meet Annie's wide eyes.

"Two dollars says he kissed someone by accident again."

As if this one sentence had the power to make her anger disappear, Annie giggled and sat up. She tried to pull a reluctant Jeff by his hand. "Come on, you got me out here. We have a rescue to perform. It's _our_ job as his assistants."

"Comrades," corrected Jeff.

"Sidekicks?"

"Companions."


	4. Six Months Off For Bad Behavior

There needs to be TWO HUNDRED FICS WHERE JEFF IS ANNIE'S LAWYER. Seriously, why has this trend not caught on in a massive, epic way? Fandom, don't fail me now.

**Summary:** AU. Jeff is Annie's lawyer. Prompted by the Placebo song "Special Needs"

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Six Months Off For Bad Behavior**

"Congratulations, Annie." Jeff swung himself down into the metal chair, legs sprawling in every direction. He smiled like a thousand bucks, which-funny enough-was about how much his smile went for on a daily charge. "You, young lady, are sentenced to six months community service."

"Six months?" snapped Elijah Edison from across the table. Beside him, Annie slouched in orange coveralls. "Is that what I pay you for? What's my daughter supposed to do for six months, scrub park benches while her scholarship goes to some pimple-tongued ass kisser?"

Annie tried to hide her face in the table, but it was refusing to swallow her up. Jeff, on the other hand, relaxed into his sprawl and brought one knee up. "Community service is a cakewalk for two counts of possession and creating a public disturbance. I get paid for a lot of things," he said, and Annie's head shot up to glare murderously in his direction, head tilted in a direction her father couldn't see. It took all of Jeff's self-control not to wink.

"But wasting your money isn't one of them," he concluded, reaching out to tap the legal contract on the table. "Sign here, Miss Edison, and we'll have you out before your first group shower."

Before her father could bluster any more, Annie grabbed the single pen and scribbled her name at the bottom of the consent page. With her eyebrows raised imperiously, she shoved it across the table at Jeff. He did wink this time.

"Thank you, Annie."

She smiled a little. "You're welcome, Jeff."

"That's 'Mr. Winger', Annie," her father corrected absently. "Now let's get you out of here."

"Speaking of that," said Jeff, pulling out a reusable grocery bag and setting it on the table. "I brought a change of clothes for Annie, since I know you've been so busy at home, and they had to take her clothes as evidence. She won't be getting those back for months."

"That's very thoughtful, Mr. Winger," Annie said through her teeth.

"Very thoughtful," agreed Elijah. He frowned at the grocery bag. When he looked back up Jeff smiled benignly at him. Annie wore a matching expression of pleasant blankness as she gathered the clothes up. He added, "We'll be outside dear, when you're ready."

The guard opened the cell door and the two men sauntered out, Annie remaining behind them. After they passed through security checks and sought chairs in the entrance lobby to the jail, Elijah put his hands together between his knees and sighed.

"I've known you for six years, Jeff," he said.

Jeff nodded, making notes on a half-sized legal pad. "Has it been so long? I don't really pay attention to timelines, but I've appreciated representing you and your family. You guys are too level-headed to do anything too difficult to defend, and I've enjoyed our occasional lunches."

"In six years," said Mr. Edison, "I have never seen you wink at my daughter."

"Uh..." he was too cool to fumble the pen, but words were proving elusive. "Did you mean just now? Of course, I winked at her to signal that everything is okay, and she was getting off fairly light."

Elijah continued as if Jeff hadn't spoken. Whereas in the cell he'd been all bravado and volume, out here his voice was cool and even, the voice of a competent businessman. "If I find out that you've winked at my daughter at any time before last April when she turned eighteen, you're going to end up with your small intestines decorating my wife's sago palm."

"Right," said Jeff, and made a mental note that her birthday was in April. Girls liked it when you knew that stuff without asking. "Nothing to worry about."

Formalities concluded, the two men sat in the Greendale County jail's administration lobby and waited for Annie Edison to come back to them.


	5. Politics of Domestic Labor and Control

**Summary:** Annie, Jeff, a deserted island paradise.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Politics of Domestic Labor and Control**

In a blink of true anger, Jeff stabbed his knife into the fish on his cutting board bark.

"I don't see why _you_get to be Queen of the Island. I've been building the god-damn castle."

Annie folded her arms above the giant woven net she'd been working to assemble from left over rope and jungle vines. They shared a small space inside The Castle, sitting on soft dirt and surrounded by walls of reeds, sticks, and thrush. Outside the hut the early afternoon sun beat ferociously down on their tropical island, reflected and magnified by the white talcum sands.

"So?" challenged Annie. "I catch the most fish, by a steady two-thirds margin."

Jeff experimentally stabbed his fish again; it stayed dead. "I found the water in the trees."

"I figured out how to get it out," she rebounded.

"I created fire."

"I created utensils."

"I found the case of beer from the plane."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again to reconsider. She wasn't a beer sort of girl, but on a strict diet of roots, flowers, and fish it was hard to refuse new flavors, however repugnant. "Alright," said Annie. "You can be King of the Island until the beer runs out."

"Thank you," said Jeff, as he began cutting the fish.

She picked up her vine weave and resumed netting. After a sulky second she muttered, "It's not like it's even good beer."

"Shut up, you don't know anything about beer."

"I've heard stories! And it's always the European beers that people like."

Jeff shook his head and tsk'ed. "From a girl raised on The Daily Show, that statement is downright un-American."

"We're in the Indian Ocean."

"Says you."

"You know," said Annie, tugging savagely on a knot in her weave, "When people write stories about two people alone on a tropical island, they never mention how _annoying _the other person can be. It's always beautiful moonlit beaches and getting caught in a rainstorm just outside your warm, protective hut."

"If you don't like the Yoshi Island Castle, just step right through those branches."

Annie gave a short, pitchy gasp. Throwing down her net, she stood and walked two feet to the hole in the branches. She flung her hair back with a swish, put her back to Jeff, and in one sweep removed her top. Then she pushed out the door, tugging at her belt.

"I'm going for a swim! Alone!"

Jeff looked from the fish to the gradually diminishing back of the naked young woman. He dropped his knife on the bark cutting board and scrambled out of the hut.

"Hey! You can be Queen of the Island if you want! I'll write up a contract!"


	6. Truth Is Probably Somewhere Out There

**Prompted by For ****swing_set13.****  
**

**Summary:** FBI agents AU, either the truth is out there or there is crime to stop!

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**The Truth Is Probably Somewhere Out There**

"Aaaaaaaaaagent Winger, so good to see you! _Not._ Big news, buddy! You're off racketeering as of yesterday. Yes, time for a _Chang _ of scenery. It's too much of a liability to let you talk to those people if every other word out of your mouth inhibits a future arrest. Lucky for your shit-skinny ass our 'wise and indubitable' Deputy Hawthorne still thinks you're worth employing. So clear your desk and mosey down, down, doooooooown to the basement. Report to Special Agent Edison, she'll be supervising you in the adjunct department-yes, I'm talking about the cold cases. And if you think you can con her because of her age, know this my not-friend: I've already warned her that if you even _breathe _at her inappropriately, it will be just the excuse I need to ice you. She earned the right to her own department, a feat you have failed at spectacularly-no, don't even think about opening your mouth. Get out of my office and report to your new boss, before I grind your testicles into my snack time cheese grater."

Stepping off the elevator in the basement level of the Bureau's Rocky Mountain Regional HQ building was a bit like stepping into 1992. Lights flickered half-heartedly along the narrow hallway, and two doors down a fax machine sat against the wall, unplugged sometime before the second internet boom. More discarded appliances littered the rangy carpet as Jeff made his way to the assigned office, as if the place had been looted when the population moved above ground with the promises of sunlight and a T-3 line.

"Hello?" Two knocks, and the door swung open. A feminine voice hollered back, and he stepped into another universe. Where the hallway had been dirty and used, this space was immaculate. New rugs, an unused but cheerful reception desk, and a series of locked cabinets with a small sink and counter filled the space. At least seven potted plants demonstrated someone's passionate effort to overcome the lack of windows. Doors went off either side of the room, with his new partner's voice coming from the right. Raising his eyebrows, Jeff walked to the door on the left instead, and whistled when he peaked inside. On one end of this room was another desk and a short filing cabinet. In front of that was a small conference table with six chairs, facing an ornate multimedia system, with a projector included, and none of it more than a year old. Burying his grin, Agent Winger spun and went to the opposite wing.

"Agent Edison?" he asked, stepping in head and shoulders first. He ducked a hanging vine plant. "Jeff Winger, reporting."

A short woman with quite dark hair leaned around her monitor to stare at him, lips pursed. "Hello, Jeff, I'm Special Agent Annie Edison," she said, and offered a quick, intense smile. Jeff felt his jaw drop half a centimeter to the left, and blinked. It was unbelievable that this girl could be his supervisor-she could barely be the FBI's minimum of twenty-six, much less experienced enough to run her own department. Beneath a curtain of sleek hair Annie had a heart-shaped face, classic cherry lips, and eyes that belonged on an animated princess, not a law enforcement officer. She probably weighted less than a hundred twenty pounds, wet. They shook hands, and Jeff noted her grip was aggressive, even for a female agent.

"I was told I'd be getting someone assigned to the project; it's so good to have you on the team. As you can see, this office is a biiiiiiiiit," she stretched out the word just a few syllables longer than necessary, realized it, and caught up, "of a diamond in the rough! But with two of us, the caseload will be a lot easier. You can have the desk in the main room."

Jeff blinked twice at her, reminding himself forcibly of his Supervising Special Agent Chang's warning. No wonder the little man had threatened his career over the issue, if this was who he'd be working with. "The desk in the media conference room?"

"No, that's for projects," said Annie.

He smiled with a deferring shrug, leaning his weight on the edge of her desk. "Of course you do know the layout best, but I'm sure I'd be more productive in the conference room."

Annie leaned back in her chair, and folded her arms. "Okay, big shot. Take the conference room, hopefully the networking access will speed along your introduction."

Jeff grinned, and mock-saluted. "Sure thing, boss."

Annie smiled, closed mouth but a bit flushed, and waved him out. "I put out three cases for you, get started on those."

He nodded, swung out of her office, and sauntered into the conference room. Jeff dropped into the ergonomic desk chair and spun, imagining how he'd decorate the space. The plants were a good idea, but he'd have to find just the right picture to go beside his degree certificate and his Key to the City.

His third rotation came to an abrupt halt. Something smelled...odd. Odd and cold. He lifted his head, and sniffed again, raising his eyes up, up, and up... to a vent in the wall. He stood to his full height, just half a foot below the vent, and took a deep breath.

"What the hell!" he yelled, and leapt back. Annie's young, pretty voice sounded from the other office.

"Are you sure you want the conference desk, Agent Winger? The plumbing in these old buildings is _so_creative. And to think, this is only March. You're going to love the place in July! Fragrant is a generous description."

Picking up his box of personal items, Jeff stalked back to the main room and dropped the load onto the reception desk. He shouted back in her direction, a little louder than necessary: "I'll be taking the main desk! There's better lighting, and it's closer to the case files."

"Very wise!" Annie sing-songed back. Jeff glared at her office, then tugged a leaf off the nearest potted lily.

"And I'm getting better plants!"

"Of course!"

"And a mini fridge!"

"If you like. Welcome aboard, Jeff."


	7. Hey Hey, You You

**Summary:** Prompt for risskabob, "Jeff never lost his license, Annie never lost her scholarship."

_ Hey hey, you you. I don't like your girlfriend. Hey, hey, you you. I think you need a new one._

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Hey Hey, You You**

They first appear sitting apart from each other in a desperately fair-trade coffee shop, him with a Starbucks travel mug and she with a stack of textbooks. He types on his netbook and lounges like an overpaid libertine stuck in a monkey suit; her eyes pass right over him. He's automatically classified, categorized, and apportioned with the other half-dozen patrons: too old to be exciting, probably married and doing the nanny, gets coffee here because it's within walking distance. They have no reason to communicate, and would continue in a romance of apathy if it weren't for the event of his girlfriend choosing that afternoon to dump him in the most brutally public way Annie Edison has yet witnessed in this life.

The blond woman is not merely beautiful, she is stunning. In black boots, golden curls, and delicate cheekbones she is an amalgamation of everything Annie envies. Slim and tall, she sails into the coffee shop. Past the tables, past her monkey suit boyfriend, right up to the register she floats. Monkey suit looks up from his trendy miniature laptop and waves one long arm holding an iPod to get her attention, but she ignores him. Annie looks at her textbook quickly; she's too familiar with social awkwardness to get voyeuristic pleasure from someone else's humiliation.

"I'd like one iced chai latte and one iced mocha," the goddess in leather and naturally wavy hair says to the barista. She looks exactly like what Annie wants to grow up to be, except somehow more free of spirit than Annie's type-A Personality would cop to. The clerk fills the woman's order, and a few minutes pass while the tall man tries unsuccessfully to catch her attention without leaving his table. Annie then watches as the man's beautiful girlfriend removes the plastic lids from both drinks, throws them into the nearest recycling container, and apologizes to the register clerk. She walks to her boyfriend, and when he smiles gratefully and holds out his hand, she dumps the mocha frappuccino down his face.

"This is me breaking up with you," says the woman who, Annie will much later learn,_ isn't _named after a popular kitchen appliance. His silent, open-mouthed stare is something Annie only ever imagined in movies, maybe romantic comedies. Except the more the woman talks, the less comedic the whole thing sounds.

"I know you're a man of words," says his new ex-girlfriend, "So I'll spell it out. You, Jeff Winger, are a pariah on my soul. You have sucked everything cool and individual out of me and turned me into a person who thinks sweatshops might be arguably okay if they raise the GDP of the People's Republic and fifteen years later trickle down to the average income of the Chinese worker. The idea that I let you fuck me into moral ineptitude says _maybe_ more about me than it does about you, but it still says everything one needs to know about your future. I hope you live a long and happy life with someone of equally shoddy moral character."

Then she dumps the iced chai onto his lap and leans forward to lick a bit of foam off his nose with her little pink tongue. "Adios, mi amigo," she says, and walks out to awesome silence.

"Fuck," breathes Jeff Winger, who is still holding an iPod in his other hand, now latte-flavored and inoperable. "Fuck! Awww man!" He ignores the slushie stuff on his head and clothes and continues to shake his mp3 player uselessly. "That's just...fuck."

Then he looks at his free hand, the only part of him not dripping, the hand that is still half-way extended in the direction of the departing woman, and whispers to the universe, "But I gave up meat for two years for her."

And this is it, the last straw, the most ridiculous thing that's been said in the last ten minutes, and finally Annie can't stand it anymore. "There's a steakhouse on Eighteenth!" she blurts.

The tall man called Jeff looks up. "Oh," he replies, still kind of quiet. Then he busts a smile-rakish, sexy, and completely out of place beneath a crown of sugar and slush coffee. "Thanks," he says, and Annie swears she can feel it down to her uterus.

This look, between a wince and a smile, is beginning of the long and complicated tale of how Annie Edison, student and almost-but-not-quite drug addict, begins her first love affair.


	8. Sentence Fic: The First 5 Dates

**Summary:** Jeff and Annie's first five dates. Sentence fics.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**The Five First Dates**

1. To be honest, she was expecting something a little more exciting than coffee.

2. "I know I said I care about you earlier, but that was before I met this steak. You pushed me away for three years, but this steak says it wants me just as much as I want it. I may never love like this again."

3. "Laser tag isn't exactly paintball, but I think your excellent aim will go nicely with my naturally terrifying stature. And there are plenty of dark corners."

4. He wondered it she intentionally stood in front of sunlit windows, or if the warm light just gravitated toward her because all his Disney predictions were actually true.

5. The day after everyone celebrated her twenty first birthday, he took her wine tasting. They crushed grapes, drank freely, and laughed until the kisses overwhelmed their voices.


	9. Things In My Heart

**Prompt:** "Annie accidentally, or not, reads Jeff's journal, where he has wrote down his feelings about Annie."

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Things In My Heart  
**

It taunted her from the desk top: a boring shade of green with "NOT YOURS" written in blue Sharpie on the top. She told herself anyone could have dropped it, but that lie would never stand in court. This was really real, and she was really thinking about reading it. For real. Because he owed it to her. He was so good at analyzing people, he probably left it for her! That would be just like his twisted little male mind.

Or maybe it just fell out of his bag? A true friend would return it to him.

But they weren't just friends. Jeff was always making that abundantly clear. So if they were even a little bit more than friends, then she had a little bit of a right to be nosy. Just in case. Of whatever.

After taking ten minutes to decide what most people decided in under thirty seconds, Annie opened the Jeff Winger journal.

"What the heck?" she said, as she stared down at the first page. With a furrowed brow, she flipped to the next page. It was blank. The one after that: blank. In fact, the entire journal was empty except a brief list on the front page.

At first she thought it was a to-do list. Then she thought it was a shopping list. Then she couldn't decide.

_Magic trampoline.  
Scotch.  
Annie's breasts.  
Faucets.  
New sheets.  
Billiards.  
A big house.  
Lexus.  
Annie's breasts in a blue sweater.  
Bourbon.  
The Red Door.  
Making someone cry in court.  
Shirley's peanut butter chocolate bars.  
A newer Lexus.  
Scotch.  
Breasts. _

"What are you looking at?" said Abed behind her. Annie nearly jumped out of her skin. Then she rounded on him.

"Men are disgusting!" she shouted, and threw the journal at his chest.


	10. Just One Damsel, For Tradition's Sake

**Prompt:** "Jeff sees Annie in "danger" during the final pillow battle, and he goes to save her," for Eleventhimpala.

**Rating:** General

**Spoilers: **Season 3, "Pillows and Blankets"

**Summary:** A war may be tearing friendships apart. A damsel may be in distress. A rescue may be in order.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

******Just One Damsel, For Tradition's Sake**

She never saw Alex coming. The brown couch pillow hit Annie full in the face, leaving a feeling of rug burn and the smell of cigarettes stinging her cheek. The young medical administration major swayed and then stumbled, the detached corner of her mind wondering what she'd ever done to Starburns to induce an attack so vehement. Was this the true horror of war? The forsaking of humanity to serve the base animal aggression of combat? Why couldn't she focus? Was the frenzy of battle actually blurring her vision? There it was again, above her: something brown and square and-

"Annie!" a voice shouted, then her shoulder felt like it was being pulled near out of its socket. She was yanked to one side without a fight, right into a warm chest and strong, heavy arms.

"Jeff," said Annie, smiling woozily. "What are you doing on the battleground? Are you the one who hit my head? You're a pacifist. Uhhh, owwww. My head hurts."

"Blanket Objector," Jeff hissed in her ear. Seeing no way out of the corridor except through a throng of exceptionally violent feather fall, he scooped her up and rebalanced her weight in his arms. "Put your arms around my neck and duck your head."

"Okie dokie," Annie slurred. Her breath tickled the place where his shirt met his collar bone, and Jeff closed his eyes.

"You smell like soap," he said. "It's nice. It's really nice."

"Mmmmm. You smell like, like..." Annie went slack in his arms. Jeff cursed in his head, held her close, and ran for it.


	11. Stupid Things Humans Say To Hello Kitty

**Prompt:** "ANNIE GIVES JEFF A HELLO KITTY NOTEBOOK AS A GIFT" for **veryspecialOne.**

**Rating:** General

**Spoilers: **Season 3, "Pillows and Blankets"

**Summary:** "If I get a Hello Kitty Journal, will you like me again?"

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Stupid Things Humans Say That Hello Kitty Has Been Forced to Hear Every Day Since 1974**

"Annie, this gift is thoughtful, but more than a little manipulative."

"I learn from the best, Jeff. What's wrong, are you afraid to be seen with Hello Kitty?"

"I'm not afraid to be seen with anything. If I decided to write in a Hello Kitty diary, she'll be a purring, silken pussy cat by the end of my first entry."

"Jeff! Women are not kittens."

"Really? I'll note that in my diary."

"Now you're just being mean. You can't pretend that you don't have a deeper level. You spent a half hour convincing us you had a deeper level the other day, when you wanted us to win the poetry competition, and now you're gonna back out? Too late, mister. You're on the character development train."

"I knew that you living with Abed would have its consequences."

"I meant 'character' in the classic sense!"

"Dear diary, today Annie revealed her true nerd self to me. Then she offered to do all my homework to keep me from talking."

"Says the man who follows Marvel on Twitter."


	12. Perlocutionary Acts For Beginners

**Prompt:** "The entire group loses their ability to speak" for **claymay83.**

**Rating:** General

**Spoilers: **Season 3, nothing particular. Crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush".

**Summary:** Can't even shout, can't even cry, The Gentlemen are coming by. This time, they go to Greendale.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Perlocutionary Acts For Beginners **

It begins with a black suit and a white skull, with long bony fingers and grinning teeth. Tall shadows float through the streets of a West Colorado hamlet called Greendale, stealing voices in faded wisps of soul. Morning comes, and the miracle of every Greendale Community College student has finally come to pass: the Greendale Seven nothing to say.

Troy and Abed wheel in a thirty-six inch high def screen from the film department, steering it to face the study table while everyone arranges themselves on the far side. Jeff is at the corner touching shoulders with Annie, Britta and Pierce are standing behind Shirley's chair. Abed hands out personal white boards and dry-erase markers while Troy is flipping through network news stations. He stops on the picture of a small, singing girl. She stares into the camera with her hands clasped; her voice is young and clear.

"Can't even shout. Can't even cry. The gentlemen are-"

Abed switches the channel to his laptop feed. The girl disappears. He turns to face the group, and begins typing in twenty-eight-plus font.

**WE ARE STILL RECEIVING LIVE TV AND RADIO. THIS APPEARS TO BE A LOCALIZED EVENT.**

Annie holds up her board: **A DOG BARKED AT ME. IT'S ONLY HUMANS. **

Shirley taps the corner of her whiteboard against the table. **I TOLD YOU SO. ALL OF YOU.**

Britta rolls her eyes and displays her own sign. **ARE YOUR KIDS OKAY? MY FAMILY LIVES IN BOULDER.**

Shirley nods and makes a dismissive gesture. **ANDRE TOOK THEM TO SEE HIS PARENTS YESTERDAY. **

There's a loud _thwump_ as Pierce smacks the table. Everyone looks at him.

Abed: **WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND? **

Pierce points his finger at Jeff and Annie, nearly across the table from him. **YOU TWO DID THIS. **

Annie's silent scoff matches Jeff's **WTF? **scribble.

**YES, **says Pierce's red marker. **YOU TWO DID IT AND NOW THE WORLD IS ENDING.**

Everyone makes a face, except Abed who just taps his foot against his chair leg. **THAT SEEMS UNLIKELY.**

Shirley: **THE WORLD IS ENDING BECAUSE HUMANITY HAS FORESAKEN JESUS**. She pauses to erase and scribble again. **NOT BECAUSE OF THESE TWO .**

Troy chews on the end of his marker, then scrawls: **UNLESS ANNIE'S SPECIAL PLACE IS MAGIC, HOW'S THAT WORK?**

Britta starts writing: **IT'S CALLED A VAGINA. NOT A SPEC-**

Annie slams her whiteboard on the table, looks all of them in the eyes, then marches out of the study room. The door clicks loudly when it swings shut behind her. Jeff stands and puts on his jacket. He picks up his pen and board to write, then shakes his head and tosses the stuff to Abed. He walks out and turns in the same direction Annie took.

**NOW WHO TOLD YOU SO** declares Pierce's sign.

Abed claps twice for the group's attention, then types on the tv screen as quickly as he can before they get distracted again.

**WE NEED TO FIND A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES.** He tilts his head a moment, looking at the ceiling in thought. **AND WE NEED TO VOTE ON WHO HAS THE BEST SCREAM AT GREENDALE.**

Four boards are held up:  
**GARRETT.  
THE DEAN.  
MY BLACK FRIEND TROY.  
OTHER ANNIE KIM.**

Abed nods. **OKAY, LET'S FIND THE DEAN.**


	13. The Searing Truth

**Prompt:** "In 3.08, Jeff is playing the Dean, a role he eventually grows comfortable in, grows attached to, feels. Annie/Jeff-as-the-Dean." for **na_thalia.**

**Rating:** Teen

**Notes:** This is either the best or worst J/A scene I've ever written. In the tradition of my ATLA fic Culture Clash, but for Community characters.

**Spoilers:** 3x08, Documentary Filmmaking: Redux

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**The Searing Truth**

He loomed over her, brooding his feelings outward to the universe with wide, squirrel eyes. The florescent lighting reflected with genius off his bald cap. "Dean Jeff," she breathed. "I have...a confession."

"What is it Annie?" He was taller than the other Dean, but he couldn't bring himself to stoop, even to look at her beautiful watery eyes. What had the other Dean always wanted, if not to be tall? The Dean was becoming him now, and he was becoming _it_. He thought of the time desk, and something tingled in his silk boxers. But time for that later, of course. He knew where to find it, if he needed it. For now, Annie was here. She was almost as good.

"Are you finally admitting your desire for a dean sandwich?" he purred. "It can be done. Extra olives."

Annie blushed, and ducked her head. Her smile faltered for a second, then rebounded with a few eyelash winks for extra points. "Not precisely, I just wanted to tell you. Seeing you...like this." She touched his bald cap, slipping one chipped fingernail under the hairline flap. "It just seems so...right, you know? So inevitable."

"That the Dean and I would become one? That we would complete each others' novels and rest our buttocks against the same warm chair?"

"Yes, Dean Jeff. That, of course, had to happen." She stepped up to the Dean and brushed his chest with her cleavage. Even sweat-stained and mustard-y, the cotton clung to her with unholy gravitation. "And most of all, I knew that one day, I'd be doing this."

Annie stroked one womanly finger down his skull, from forehead to nape. "To touch you like this," she breathed against his lips. "When you're earnest and so, _so _bald..."

The word slithered from her purpled lips and entered Dean Jeff, invading him like a noxious gas. It filled his mouth and expanded through his lungs. It suffocated his nose and poured out his ears until it covered the cavernous cafeteria. It seared Dean Jeff's nervous system and poisoned his capillaries, burning the nuclei of every cell until, in a raging torrent of pain, Dean Jeff staggered, leaned against a table, and died.

"Dean Jeff?" asked Annie breathlessly. A bald cap, finally done in with too much sweat and not enough belief, slithered to the linoleum. The man opened cold, hateful eyes.

"What the fuck, Annie!"

Jeff Winger leaped to his feet and pointed at her chest with an unforgiving laser pointer. "I know we're getting caught up and all, but to hear that? From _you_? I'm going to the mall to buy leave-in-conditioner, and then I'm going home!"


	14. Man Up

**Prompt:** "It's Annie's wedding day, and Jeff is not the groom."

**Rating:** Teen

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord.

**Spoilers:** none

* * *

.

**Man Up  
**

"I can't believe you're going to let this happen," Shirley hissed. She took a sip from her champagne flute, smacked her lips together in appreciation, and then shook the glass at Jeff in accusation.

"What do you expect me to do about it?" was her friend's casually bitter response. As one, they looked at the groom standing beside the altar. Annie was hidden in a small room off to the corner of the entrance, invisible to guests until the big music. "She wants to marry him. We hate him. She wants to marry him more."

"You can go over there, sweep in, and tell her that you _love her._"

"Shirley, you called me a pedophile last week!" Admittedly, they'd been discussing his first kiss with eighteen-year-old Annie in freshman year, but still: "Since when are you encouraging the possibility of me and Annie?"

Shirley was married with three boys; she knew weaseling-out behavior when she heard it. She elbowed Jeff, hard. "Since she decided to marry an idiot and sweeping romantic gestures became our only recourse. I won't let that man babysit my kids, Jeffrey. You've_ got to stop this_."

"Your great solution is that I lie to Annie to get her to leave him at the altar?"

With a hiss of disgust, she hit Jeff in the chest with her purse. He barely managed to save his suit from the champagne.

"You wouldn't be lying, and everyone knows it. You're just lying now because you're a coward. We all know, Jeff." Shirley looked him dead in the eyes. "We _all _know."

Now the real panic started marching across the former lawyer's face. In the distance, opening notes of music began to chime. "You all know what?"

"That you love that poor girl! You make googly eyes at her every day we get together. And now you're going to let her marry another man, when she carried a torch for you for three years? What is _wrong _with you, Jeffrey Winger! Annie is beautiful and smart, and she has better childbearing hips than Britta ever will. If you don't step in before disaster strikes, you're going to be every bit as lonely as you were ever afraid you'd turn out to be!"

"If you think it's such a big mistake," Jeff snapped in a barely-whispering whisper, "Why don't you stop the wedding?"

Shirley threatened to hit him with her purse again. "You're the man in love, it's your job. Man up, Jeffrey!"


	15. Bending 101

**Prompt:** "The study group as benders in the _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ universe. Pre-war, so air-bending exists as an option."

**Rating:** Teen

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord. This prompt was challenging, because I couldn't decide if the study group should belong in the world of ATLA or not. Eventually I decided they were all "foreigners" to Ba Sing Se and everyone knows that foreigners can be excused for their weird behavior. And sorry that these next few drabbles stop cold, the whole challenge was about speed writing, minimum 300 words each.

**Spoilers: **Season 1 and light season 3 for Community... just implied connections for season 1 of ATLA

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Bending 101**

The Dean of Ba Singh Green College (in this case literally a third tier school) scuttled into the small, lightly furnished room, pointed to a dilapidated table with eight unpromising chairs, and pushed a group of mildly put-out students to their new future.

"While we may not aspire to the standards of Ba Singh Sei University, we at Ba Singh _Green_ College strive to provide a diverse course load for our students. Even for..."

The skinny, bald Dean looked around at the group.

"...Foreigners. You'll find we're much more respected than Sei City College, however. Please sign out of the study room on the scroll by the door when you leave."

"Alright!" crowed a handsome, dark skinned young man. He took the first seat. "I'm Troy. Ready to go! Earth bender and number one fan of The Boulder! Who here is a bender. Bender? Bender?"

Another young man spoke up. "Airbender. Abed." He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Annie Eddison," said a young, attractive woman on the far end of the table. She opened her hand to show tiny flames jumping from finger tip to finger tip. Annie wiggled her fingers, then closed them quickly, looking quite proud of herself.

Britta raised her hand. "Britta Perry. I'm a waterbender. It's the most natural element, you know. And I'm a licensed healer-"

"You got kicked out," said the tall man lounging to the blonde's left. "On your first day."

"You don't know that!" Britta snapped, but a little too quickly. "You've never met me before. I could heal any one of you. If I wanted to."

"Know your audience. I'm Jeff Winger... _also_ a waterbender." He grinned, and slouched even more lazily in his chair.

Annie released a short, high pitched gasp. "You! I "know about you. You got kicked out of Ba Singh Sei's royal litigation council. Because you..." Her voice dropped to a whisper: "Offended the King's first wife."

Jeff smirked. Nay, he _leered_. "I wouldn't say she was offended."

"Why?" asked Britta suspiciously.

"It must have been awful," said Annie. "I heard you nearly got beheaded."

Jeff leaned forward in her direction. "Would you really like to know?"

Like a rabbit trapped in charm's headlights, Annie nodded.

"Well," drawled Jeff. "It wasn't what I said. More like..." He flicked his fingers toward the young woman, wriggled them, and flicked them again.

"Ahhck!" Annie yelped, and grabbed the table. She was breathing hard, nearly bent over, and her face bloomed brilliant scarlet.

"Hey!" snapped Britta, flinging her water canteen onto the table and preparing to yank the top off. "That's sexual assault."

"No, no!" gasped Annie weakly. She waved in their direction, trying to catch her breath. "It's okay. I'll get over it. I'm good. Not bad at all."

"That's just indecent," humphed the woman next to Annie. "That sort of thing is completely inappropriate for a college study room. And how old are you anyway, young lady?"

But Annie refused to look at anyone, and Jeff looked smug.

"What about you?" asked Abed.

"Oh, me! I'm a bender," said the elegant woman in red clothing. "Most people wouldn't guess it as I'm a proud black woman of the far west, but I'm a firebender. My name's Shirley."

"Bet that's not the only thing you bend," said the last member of the study group, a man in clothing far too wealthy for an outer ring city school. With no warning, a fireball shot over his head to singe the crumpled promotional posters.

"Watch your mouth," said Shirley, one finger pointed right at the old man, whose name tag said Pierce Hawthorn. "Just because I'm a pious woman, doesn't mean I won't roast you. You see this scar?"

She pointed to a small, faint discoloration on her left cheek, near her left eye.

"I don't see it," said Troy.

"It's almost invisible," agreed Abed. "It could just be bad make up."

"It's a burn scar!" Shirley snapped. "It's a mark of my of my dishonor. From back when I was a teenage monster: always yelling at people, breathing fire right and left, picking on little water boys-"

"What?" yelped Jeff.

"And genuinely being a bully," said Shirley. "But I redeemed myself, and I'm a good person now. But if you cross me, Pierce, I WILL BURN YOU." Her voice dropped back to saccharine and delightful. "In the name of the Good Spirit World, of course."

"Whatever," muttered Pierce. "I hate all you benders, anyway. Bunch of pretentious kids just throwing rocks and rivers at people any time you like."

* * *

My reasoning: Annie and Shirely for firebenders, because they are passionate, tightly wound, attractive, and ambitious. Jeff and Britta for waterbenders, because they are highly social, go-with-the-flow, quick to anger and quick to forgive. Troy for earthbending because he's grounded, generous, stubborn, and tolerant. Abed, obviously a born airbender. And Pierce stepped on too many small creatures in his last life to get rewarded with bending this time around.


	16. Snooping

**Prompt:** "Jeff hangs around in Annie's room and finds her sexy Santa and paintball costumes in her closet."

**Rating:** Mature light

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord. Sorry that these next few drabbles stop cold, the whole challenge was about speed writing, minimum 300 words each.

**Spoilers: **Season 3 post Christmas.

_**.  
**_

* * *

.

**Snooping**

Jeff Winger was not particularly disposed to snooping. For a guy like him it was unnecessary: he was excellent at reading people in conversation, and a little verbal or emotional interrogation usually provided the rest. Tangible investigation for the sake of knowing seemed too much like work for Jeff to get any satisfaction from it. In his opinion, most people weren't very interesting anyway.

And yet, Annie Eddison rose to the top of every list, even this one. Annie _was_ an interesting person. At this moment Jeff was standing in front of her exceedingly interesting closet.

"Did you find it yet?" called Troy from the apartment's common area.

"I can't fight those pesky rebels without a lightsaber, and Commander Eddison confiscated it yesterday," contributed Abed, a slight keening in his voice. "It's only been 22 hours and the Naboo are already showing signs of insurgency!"

"Just a minute!" shouted Jeff. His eyes raked over sweaters, blouses, and skirts of every fabric. It had to be here, somewhere, he knew it.

"We only let you in there because you're an outside observer and have not been strictly forbidden like we have!" Troy yelled. "You better not be doing creepy Winger things!"

"Rebels!" added Abed.

Jeff ignored this, determined to take full advantage of the loophole in Annie's roommate to closet prohibition. It was their fault, anyway, letting him in here. Abed was an alien so it was understandable, but Troy was in for it. Hopefully Annie would rip their ears off for letting a man, much less one of her friends, inspect her clothes. Until that happened, Jeff would just-

"Hah!" he crowed.

Two voices piped up: "Did you find it?" and "Where was it?"

He tugged on a hanger and produced a soft, vibrant dress in red fabric and white trim. Running his hand along the fur edges, Jeff let memory take him back to a kinky, happy place he would forever remember as The Annie Christmas. The idea that she kept this intrigued him, and the fantasy that she might practice wearing it to relive that scene was nearly enough to get him hard right here in her bedroom.


	17. Heart Ache, Heart Break

**Prompt:** He loves her. And it _hurts._

**Rating:** Teen

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord. Vignette, this time around.

**Spoilers:** none

* * *

.

**Heart Ache, Heart Break  
**

There is no teacher like experience, the people say. Good and bad, Jeff Winger had gotten plenty of teaching when it came to women. He'd been dumped well more than once in his life, not the least of which was by Michelle Slater, Hot Teacher Numero Uno.

So he knew about the sick feeling in your stomach when a pretty girl calls you names and rejects you. Not that it showed, since he was usually pretending to do other things...like read a magazine, look up his calendar on his palm pilot, or play _Jetpack Joyride_ on his data phone_._ Because he'd frequently done something worthy of getting dumped for (or, in a few cases, specifically intended to garner that result) Jeffrey thought he understood enough about adult relationships to know what heartache was about.

Until his fourth year at community college, when he realized he'd had _no idea_.

It was like a living wound had broken open inside his chest and behind his temples. Any time the light hit Annie Edison's hair a particular way, or any time she met his eyes to include him in her smile, a longing so intense it burned just poured right out of the universe into Jeffrey Winger's very center. His emotional core. His soul. Whatever remained after years of neglect that kept him upright and part of humanity. Most of the time, good things just trickled in... his friendship with the study group, his zeal at Greendale competitive events, the smell of Shirley's cooking or the sight of Abed and Troy's secret handshake. But Annie was an onslaught against the hole in Jeff's heart, a raging torrent of all things beautiful, unattainable, funny and silly and brilliant.

Jeff was finally in love, and it _hurt._ He'd never understood that it could hurt so much: this wanting, and not having. After years of thinking that novelists, filmmakers, and most especially songwriters were overindulgent hacks, he had to face up to the fact that maybe he was the one who'd been childish. This whole time he might have been the one to miss out, the one who didn't get it.

Because how could any sane adult enjoy this? How did the rest of the world walk around every day feeling this way about another person and not scream their brains out at the slightest provocation? If Jeff couldn't fathom having these emotions before he met Annie, he was definitely having a hard time with the idea that it could continue any longer.

Things were going to change. Jeff Winger did not _do_ heartbreak. Jeff Winger either left town in a blaze, or got the girl. And there was no way he was leaving town after falling in love with Annie Edison.


	18. All the Effort

**Prompt:** The study group as the crew of _Serenity_.

**Rating:** Teen

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord. CROSSOVER!

**Spoilers:** none

* * *

.

**All the Effort**

"You know," says Annie conversationally, "I almost became a Companion."

In the pilot's chair, Jeff nearly mucks up the flight controls in his surprise. He gazes at the young medic beside him, eyes running over her form in a new light. She catches him, and smiles a little when he looks guilty. He doesn't mean to be so crude, but her words catch him off guard and it seems the normal male reaction.

Jeff wants to ask how she isn't a Companion today, but he decides instead to confess: "I believe you."

Annie smiles wanly, settling into her co-pilot's chair. Beside her the captain is manning the helm since Abed, the pilot, and Troy, their mechanic, are both dead asleep. She'd enjoyed these chats with Jeff Winger since he picked up her and her doddering grandfather on Triumph, ninth planet in the Red Sun System. She's been paying their passage with her medical training, and her grandfather has friends in unlikely places. When the stretches between worlds get long and too lonely for sleep or exercise, Annie wanders up to the bridge and, more often than not, finds the Captain. It's as if their sleep schedules have lined up somehow, which Annie knows is a ridiculous postulation on a spaceship with no artificial night rhythms. Still, the thought pleases her.

"I tell it true," she assures him. "Pierce, my grandfather, paid for my apprenticeship when I was thirteen, and it was staggering. I didn't find out exactly how staggering until years later. But I never completed the training."

"Didn't enjoy it?" asks Jeff neutrally. His eyes scan the stars through their bow window, but his attention is focused on Annie.

"I picked up the self-defense and the etiquette easily, even the lessons on empathy and conflict resolution. But I froze up at the idea of..." her voice falters, then regains itself. "Of seduction. Even though they don't have you start that stuff until years into the program, I knew it was coming, and I didn't want that life. I didn't want to spend my time pleasing other people, and never pushing for myself."

"No way. I see what this is _really_ about," Winger says lightly. He winks at the the young woman in the co-pilot's chair. "You're just lazy. You want the men to seduce _you_. You want them to put in all the effort."

Annie laughs, punching him in the shoulder. "Well? How much effort do you think I rate?"

He pretends to wince at the punch, then smirks. "For you? A man would...break a light sweat."


	19. Principal's Office

**Prompt:** Jeff and Annie get stuck in the dean's office after hours.

**Rating:** Mature. Request: "AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE."

**Notes:** From the **2012 Fic Battle: FIRING SQUAD!** challenge at Milady_Milord. Smut fic! I give good porn, so don't read this if you're delicate.

**Spoilers:** none

* * *

.

**Principal's Office**

"Do you think he's coming back?" Annie whispered in the darkness. Jeff's hard body against her muffled the sound, and nearly blocked what little light blinked from the desktop monitor and ambient electronics. Fabric was all that separated them, but hands were already finding their way past zippers and buttons.

"Stop talking about the Dean," commanded Jeff, and to make his point he slipped two fingers inside her, rubbing his thumb against her clit in a sharp, rapid series of caresses. Annie arched her back beneath him, bringing her brightly embroidered bra into perfect view. They were almost too big for the guest sofa in the Dean's office, but the cushions were soft and the woman beneath him was softer still. He felt her try to clench around his fingers, but everything was too wet, too slick, to provide any resistance.

He trailed hot kisses up her collarbone as he murmured things he knew would send her over the edge. "There are people outside the office right now, trying to find that renegade monkey named after you. All of our friends are roaming the halls, and the administrative staff are clocking late hours." He finger-fucked her slowly, roughly. He dragged against her labia languidly, then shoved up against the upper wall of her vagina, alternating fast and slow. Beneath his hands, Annie's eyes fluttered and her luscious mouth opened to breathy, silent words. He licked her breasts, working past the bra with his teeth.

"Troy and Abed are just two rooms over, Annie. Can you hear them?" Jeff pumped three fingers in her now, working his own zipper with his free hand. She moaned, a low keening noise, and he hushed her with hot kisses. "Don't let them hear you, Annie. All of our friends, only a broken door lock away. Think what they would say. Little Annie, in the principal's office, getting hot and _wet _for me like a virgin school girl. Do you want them to see us?"

"No," Annie whimpered, writhing against Jeff's hand.

"But you like it that they might, don't you?" he goaded. "You want them to know what I can do to you. What you can do to me."

"_Yes_," she gasped, and Jeff shifted his weight, removing his fingers at the last second then pressing his cock inside her in one scorching, mend-bending plunge. He pinched her clit at the same moment, and Annie screamed for him.

He wasn't fast enough to cover her mouth with his, but he made up for it by fucking her to distraction when the inevitable knocks came.


	20. All the Small Things

**Fangirl_101:** "Last day of classes of year four: food fight."

* * *

**.**

**All The Small Things**

**.**

"Oh my god, is that a brussels sprout?" Annie's hand snatched at the brown snarl on her crown, attempting to bring it around to her eyes and untangle the gooey clump it presented.

"Here, wait—there's cheese." Jeff touched her hand, pushing it aside, and gently sifted her locks with his fingers until the flakes of wet vegetable dropped to the surface of the cafeteria table. Under his ministrations, Annie picked at her sweater and fumed.

"I can't believe they instigated this. Of all days! I know they wanted something 'epic' to round out the year, but haven't we had enough adventures? For god's sake, I was kidnapped at a convention and you had to rescue your insufferable father from a shark tank. Troy even learned to pole vault in some backward attempt to impress Britta, and got cash for pretending to break his leg! How messed up does a year have to be before it's enough for those two?"

Raising his eyebrows, Jeff grabbed yet another napkin and cleaned his hands off. Crumpling it, he wiped his face for about the seventieth time in the last half hour. He handed Annie a fresh paper square, then tucked a soft chestnut curl behind her ear. There was still a swath of honey mustard on her cheek, and something egg-y caked her right shoulder. Annie barely noticed his attention, and Jeff wondered how he could be feeling such a sudden, intense affection for her when she didn't even to be in the same room, or even the same planet, right now.

"It's just, it's—I'm supposed to meet my mother today. My _mother_. She hasn't seen me in person in nearly a year, and look at me. I don't have time to change. There's cheese in my hair. Even if she's stupid and I hate her, I—I want her to see me at my best."

She grabbed his hand in a jerking lunge, tugging it close so she had his undivided attention. "Do you get that, Jeff? I mean, that's not crazy, right? I know I shouldn't care what she thinks of me at this point. But..."

"Hey, hold up there." His voice was low and warm, so sincere it could have a stranger talking. These days it felt like an unknown person had set up camp in his brain, looking at his friend and instead of seeing the intense, loopy girl from his study group he was seeing a woman that he desperately wanted to comfort. The compulsion was alien to Jeff, but not entirely new. It'd crept inside of him on and off again for a while now, infecting his behavior with a need to sit just a little closer, to lean a little further. Holding that compulsion back had exhausted him. Standing in the middle of the cafeteria on the last day of school, Jeff let it go.

The Jeff-that-wasn't Jeff could lean against this plastic table and pick bits of cheap lunch food out of Annie's hair for an hour and not feel too bored doing it. He could touch her shoulder, her brow, her elbows. He was so fucking lucky, and he barely even knew it.

After a moment, he said, "It'll be fine, Annie. And it's not crazy to want to please them, even after all their shit. I would know, right?"

"I guess." She sounded sullen, and it was such a bizarre mood for Annie Edison, that it bothered him. Jeff did not generally tolerate situations that bothered him. By nature he either ditched the scenario, or he fixed it. He couldn't fix Annie's fucked up home life any more than he could his own, but there was something he could do for her.

And that was the funny part: he wanted to do things for her. He wanted to do a _lot_ of things for her. Now that the other Jeff had snuck up from the depths of his hidden-but-apparently-not-vanquished dweebish self and grabbed hold of his insides just in time to see Annie sitting forlorn among the wrecked meal trays, there were no inhibitions anymore. The little voice inside that held him back, singing its familiar song, had been silenced by the sight of Annie, feet tucked in, with a bowl of salad, unused, in her lap.

The fight was over. The war was won.

"Annie, look at me." He touched her chin, something he'd done half a dozen times before, but it felt different this time. Everything felt different now, because the fight was over. They'd won. His thumb smeared the mustard away from her lower lip, and he said, "There's a Target on the way to the airport, right? We can leave right now, and at least get you a top. Maybe a hairbrush. Whatever it takes, we can get it. I'll drive you, my treat."

Annie's lip trembled, her breath warming the pads of his fingers ever so slightly. "You'd do that? I know you hate this stuff. Domestic stuff, I mean. Anything too personal."

"I graduated from college this morning," said Jeff. "So it looks like my afternoon is free."

_All the, small things  
True care, truth brings_  
_I'll take, one lift_  
_Your ride, best trip_

_Say it ain't so_  
_I will not go_  
_Turn the lights off_  
_Carry me home_


	21. Gamble, Gambit

******oneofthemuses prompt:** Community/Angel the Series, crossover: Jeff works for Wolfram & Hart, Annie works for The Powers That Be.

* * *

**.**

**Gamble, Gambit**

**.**

"It's time to tell the truth, Jeff." Annie circled the table and leaned close to whisper in his ear. "It's time to choose."

Jeff Winger turned his head to meet her gaze, their faces only a breath apart. "You knew it would come down to this," he retorted. "You knew who I worked for, and you knew that I was about to be brought into the real business end of Wolfram & Hart. I thought I was picking up some college student, but you fucking _targeted _me."

With an offended gasp that Jeff knew couldn't possibly be 100% genuine, Annie took the empty cafe seat adjacent to him. She crossed her legs for maximum effect, and said, "That's a rude accusation. You make it sound as if I don't like you. The truth is, I _am_ a college student. And you _did_ pick me up."

"So you're studying what-supernatural spy girl 101?"

"Law, actually."

Jeff took a swig of his energy drink. "Good for you, you'll be perfect at it."

She reached out to grab his wrist, holding it in her tiny hand until he met her gaze.

"Jeff," said Annie, voice rolling his name ever so softly this time. "When I saw the vision of you, I didn't know who you worked for. I saw _us_, and I- I thought the vision was for me. I thought- I thought _you _were for me."

A thousand movie cameras could have zoomed in on Jeff, so overwhelming was his mix of panic, fear, and anticipation at that confession.

"But then I saw your business card this morning, and I realized it wasn't about me at all. Last night, I was supposed to talk to you about Wolf, Ram, and Heart. Not...not sleep with you."

The cafe parlor filled up with the clink of dishes, the bustle of feet and cashier's ticker tape. A woman two tables over coo-coo-ed at her ratty little purse dog, feeding it strips of turkey bacon. Early morning smells permeated the air, in competition with the city of angels' ever-present, faintly nauseating smog. The unforgiving clock ticked on the wall a few feet away.

"Pretty fucking vague superpower," said Jeff at last.

"No kidding," muttered Annie, then she reached for the last of his drink. "Can we have breakfast now please?"


	22. Faith, Trust, Magic, Hope

**busycybering:** Merlin/Community crossover

* * *

**.**

**Faith, Trust, Magic, Hope**

**.**

Sir Jeffrey tossed his scabbard and cloak onto the table, raising a clatter that caught the attention of the other five people in the dining hall. Aside from them, the tavern was empty, with only Old Man Hawthorne cleaning up the back. Jeff examined the expectant faces of his friends, and exhaled.

"It's no good; Merlin is too attached to the prince. Ever since the Lady Morgana's last assassination attempt he's barely left Arthur's side."

"I knew it," said the widow Shirley. She shook her head and frowned at the red and gold cloak piled in front of Jeffrey. "I knew that girl was heading toward a bad end."

"But what does this _mean_?" asked Britta, the castle's assistant dove-keeper. "If we can't get near Merlin, how can we find out if he is what what we think he is?"

Troy twisted the tip of his hunting knife into the wood grain of the table, and interjected, "I'm still up for grab-and-go. We wouldn't be the first people to kidnap him, right?"

Abed, the wool merchant's son, followed up with a better question: "Even if we can confirm Merlin's power, how do we know that he'll tolerate other magicians? It's risky. He could wait until he needs a scapegoat for a spell he's doing, then expose us to the king."

"No!" snapped Annie, joining the conversation at last. She looked around at all of them, her eyes coming at last to rest on Jeff. In his gaze she saw a thousand moments reflected back: every kiss stolen between guard shifts, every flower brought from a distant quest, every shirt mended while listening to the king's belligerent prattle across the throne room. Even if Lady Morgana was dangerous, Annie could still remember serving her when Guinevere was ill, helping to make her gowns and style her hair on feast nights. Morgana had protected her maids, kept the soldiers' hands at bay and King Uther's wrath directed elsewhere. She'd even looked the other way, that dangerous day two years before, when she caught Annie standing a breath too close to Uther's most trusted knight.

Sir Jeffrey, now second in the royal guard.

Jeffrey, blood cousin to Prince Arthur himself.

Jeff, the secret witch.

Like herself. Like Troy and Britta and Shirley and Abed and who knew how many others in the kingdom.

Annie took a deep breath, and repeated, "No. We can't lose hope. We've all seen Merlin save the lives of villagers and noblemen alike. We've been careful, and from our efforts we _know _that he's one of us. He may never be willing to admit to it even if we did get an opportunity to confront him without raising suspicion, but he wouldn't betray us. Merlin is _good_. We can put our faith in him."

There was a shuffling sound behind her, then Pierce walked over from the bar, a towel in one hand and a dirty cup in the other. He examined the lot of them, and huffed.

"Faith, sure, that's easy. But can we bet our lives on it? Merlin might be good at heart, but he's the most incompetent pansy of a manservant in the history of Camelot. Fat lot of good hope does us if he spills the beans by accident."

Abed clicked his tongue, and said, "Time's running out to make the decision. We have to ask for Merlin's help, or try it on our own."

"Uh, we can't depend on his magic if we're being stoned to death," said Britta.

"Then we'll have to depend on our own," announced Jeff. He raised his voice, bringing to bear the charisma that first convinced men to follow him into battle, then seduced the ear of the butcher king. "I'm sorry, Annie, Abed, but we can't trust Merlin. And maybe it's more important for him to be focused on protecting Arthur, anyway. We'll have to do it ourselves. Get the materials, cast the spell, and hope it's not too late to stop the creature."

"We are so dead," muttered Troy, and Shirley nodded vehemently.


	23. Changing Rooms

Hey faithful readers! Sorry about the confusion on my last update for Notches. I posted to the wrong place, oops. But here's a little smutfic I wrote for a rapid-fire fic competition at Milady_Milord LJ comm. This was written under a deadline, probably about 10 minutes or so.

If you've enjoyed these, please check out my new gen/multi-pairing/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collection of Community short fics, "Greendale Primer". First out: Annie and Britta in a new episode of Blind/Blonde!

Prompt by **busycybering**: "Shopping for lingerie, smut."

Rating: **MATURE. **Seriously, this is straight up PORNZ. Enjoy.

* * *

.

**Changing Rooms**

.

Up against the changing room walls in a Target wasn't where Jeff imagined he'd first get Annie off, but he was ever the opportunist. She stood above him, hands splayed against the stall divider, trying not to moan while he tongued her clit. A hot pink bra with black lace covered her breasts, and he imagined slipping his hands in between the folds to caress them. But Jeff's hands were busy now, holding Annie up and keeping her legs stable around his shoulders.

She moaned his name, and Jeff slipped a finger inside her cunt as he lapped at her opening. He'd had a lot of fantasies about Annie like this: Annie laid out in his bedroom, or Annie in the Greendale cafeteria and splayed across one of the tables while he took her from behind. Annie riding him in his Lexus after he passed the bar exam. Annie pulling him into a closet at the campus and slow-stripping.

He'd never imagined they'd run into each other shopping, or that she'd ask for his opinion on her purchases. Jeff hadn't even twigged on the idea that she'd ask him into her actual stall and then tell him that if he didn't like what she was wearing, she'd just have to take it off.

Annie gave him that strip show, kicking off her clothes and tugging his jacket until he dropped down in front of her. When he'd made noises about the bra she instructed him that he could only choose one piece of underwear to lose, the other one she was going to keep. As was said before, Jeff was the consummate opportunist, and he tugged her panties off with hands that were almost as eager as a teenagers.

Now, above him, Annie mewled and writhed, pushing his face against her sex while her tits bounced beautifully in the hot pink fabric. Jeff loved that bra, it was his new favorite thing. He would buy it for her, he decided. He might even buy several.


	24. Winter Cabin

Have a bit of fluff!

Prompt by **Hypnotoad76**: "The group goes to a cabin during the winter, only for the heat to go out just as they're going to sleep. Jeff and Annie end up cuddling in bed together to try and keep warm."

* * *

.

**Winter Cabin**

.

She wanted the scene to be sexy, but it was just too damn _cold_. They lay with their beds pushed up adjacent to each other, her back tucked against the front of his clothes and his arms around her. Even with the combined blankets and the body heat, Annie half-seriously wondered if they'd make it to morning.

That would show Britta, she thought in a moment of pettiness. Central heating was not a waste of energy when it kept your insides from turning to icicles.

"Go to sleep," murmured Jeff, tightening his arms around her. Annie caught her breath as he nuzzled her hair with his nose. "Stop thinking about the temperature and think about sheep or something."

"It's a little hard to think about sheep right now," Annie managed, almost squeaking. Even through her sweatpants and heavy shirt, every point where Jeff touched her was awake and aware. And cold.

"My nose is cold," she whispered into the sleeping darkness.

"So turn around," whispered Jeff's sleepy, half-hearted voice. Of course, doing so would put them face to face, embracing, in the darkness of an old cabin on a cold, snowy night.

All in all, that didn't sound too horrible.


	25. Time Is On His Back

**Notes**: I am the Bad Wolf. I take the words, I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here.

**s3 Prompt**: Evil timeline Jeff crosses paths with real timeline Annie to warn her about Evil Abed. Written for a quick-fic battle.

* * *

.

**Time On His Back**

.

He hadn't seen her in nearly four months, the longest spring of his life, and to look at Annie now was to look at the Ghost of Christmas Past. It was numbing, frightening, almost _brain-melting_ to stand before his friend at the sunlit Greendale campus, and look into her bright eyes again. These were happy eyes, lovely eyes. They were tempered by struggle but unburdened by genuine tragedy.

Jeff had loved her eyes when they were youthful, loved them when they were guilty, and loved them when they were stark mad. In the space beneath his ribcage where his great speeches once came from, he felt only how deeply he loved every version of these eyes.

Tilting her head, hair spilling in a soft brown wave, Annie asked him all the wrong questions. "How did you grow a goatee so fast? And why are you pretending to have only one arm?"

It was difficult to think, seeing her face to face again like this. Jeff wanted to answer her questions; he was here to do a job and that job involved many explanations with large doses of panic on the side. He was here to warn her and the group about Abed finally tipping into head-on supervillainy. There was a loophole in _time_, and like the lawyer Jeff had once been, he was going to slip through the loophole and cinch it tight.

Jeff the Liar was going to save the goddamn world.

Not that it would mean anything to Annie, of course. That Annie back in the white room, or this Annie under the Colorado sun. He was a year older, and she was a year saner. He didn't know if any part of his world still could be saved, where Annie Edison was concerned.

"You look pretty today," he said.

This wasn't what he was here to do. He should be warning everyone about Abed, but... "Really pretty."

This Annie blushed, and then preened. She looked almost anywhere but his eyes, and it made Jeff think of all the times he'd fed her silky words or longing looks, only to turn his back afterward. What an asshole he'd been, to waste so much fucking _time._

The knife twisted in Jeff's ribs when he looked at this lovely woman and thought how far she could fall, how deep the well inside her mind could be, if he failed.

"I've got to go, Annie." He relished her name, lips seizing over the chance to say it again, aloud, to her. "I've got a thing. But I wanted you to hear it. Whatever happens today, whatever insanity Greendale throws at us, just remember it. You're beautiful, and I've thought so since the day I met you. Everything else I will ever tell you may be a lie, save that."

The smile was gone, the girl was gone, and the woman who reached out to touch his good arm said his name carefully. "Jeff. What's going on?"

He grinned, hoping he could still pull the face she was familiar with every day.

Abed was coming. The loop had to be cinched. Time was on his back.

"Goodbye, Annie."


	26. Better Things

**eleventhimpala's prompt:** "Abed invents a device that allows users to peer into alternate realities, and the group decides to view their alternate selves. After a few minutes of fascinated viewing, the group realizes that Jeff and Annie are a romantic item in every single timeline that they've seen, even in ones where the group hasn't come together."

* * *

.

**Better Things**

.

They're all fascinated at first, drawn to the mirror contraption with snickering voices and hunched shoulders. "This is some Harry Potter crap all right," observes Pierce, giving Abed a thumbs up. "Show me how it works, I wanna go first."

Abed does, and they all titter and sway in anticipation, but the truth loses its shine soon enough. Shirely's first world is a place without children, and she gives Abed the evil eye and dances out in a huff. Annie watches two lives, privately, then folds down the screen and shrugs into her backpack with raised eyebrows. Britta categorically refuses, on the basis that her happiness will never be dictated by other people on another planet ("Earth Seventeen," Troy insists loyally) and anyway it's probably all fake.

But Jeff's reaction is the worst of all, because Jeff cannot let go.

"Is he still watching that stuff?" Shirley asks, portent lacing through the cellphone. "It's going to give him brain cancer, like that zap device in _Men In Black_."

"I'll look into it," says Abed. "It's almost bedtime anyway."

He finds Jeff wound like a pretzel in one of their chairs, his long legs folded and the screen braced in his lap. It's half past eleven on the apartment's wall clock, and in the mirror between Jeff's hands are two bodies in a dark, quiet room.

"They're sleeping," Jeff states, as if it weren't obvious. He flicks his fingers, and the image shifts. Same people, same haircuts, but different sheets on the bed and strange furniture in the corner. Other Annie's hair fans across her pillow, and Other Jeff's arm is slung over her waist.

Abed tilts his head, inquiring, "Does this bother you?"

Jeff runs his finger down the side of the display, unable to meet his friend's eyes. "They're all like that," he says. "Most of them, I mean. There's some where she's not there, but her stuff is everywhere. And there's a few that are just...dark. I think those are the ones where I almost got hit by a car when I was twenty-two. I can only see myself, so I don't know about her life, but in mine, Annie's everywhere."

His hand clenches over the image, this time of a man sleeping on a rooftop with a gun nearby, and a woman with short brown hair standing with binoculars toward the skyline. "What's the matter with me?" he asks his friend. "In half these worlds I'm still practicing, and some of them I can tell my degree was actually real. There's many where it's all of us, here, but even in those, Annie and I have...What's wrong with me, Abed?"

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"Have I been wrong by putting a stop to us this whole time?" Waving to the picture, Jeff growls, "Most them look so disgustingly _happy_."

Abed considers it, then plucks the mirror from Jeff's hands. "I'm not the one you should be asking."


	27. My Love Is Like A Storybook Story

**note: **I'm getting a lot of fun 500 word flashfics out of the twice weekly contests over at Milady_Milord comm on Livejournal! If you're a J/A writer, scootch on over there and join in.

**prompt:** there's a knot in my chest and only you can untie me

* * *

.

**My Love Is Like A Storybook Story**

.

"There's no such thing as true love," Jeff insisted. He made a grab for the parchment. "Give me that."

Abed pulled it out of reach. "It's our only copy and you can't be trusted not to react emotionally."

"What? I'm the least emotional person on this stupid quest!"

"Right, suuuuuuuuuuure buddy," said Troy. "You're a stone cold lawyer. Same as always."

"Listen. to. me. Magic doesn't exist, grimoires are nothing but ratty old books, and _she's_ not even a princess!" Frustrated, Jeff pointed at Annie, who sat bound by thick, green vines to a throne in the center of the cafeteria. Cursed into silence, she stared with escalating annoyance at the trio, pulling on her bonds and jerking her head furiously for them to get a move on.

Speculative, Abed said, "She could be a Jewish princess, and we'd never know it?"

All three looked at Annie. She gave a tremendously sarcastic roll of her eyes, and shook her head to say that no, she was not secretly a Jewish princess.

Troy cleared his throat melodramatically. "According to this ratty old paper that Jeff doesn't believe in, we gotta kiss the princess to free her before the clock strikes four-thirty, or the swamp will take over the castle. I'd do it, but I have a girlfriend." He looked apologetically at his imprisoned roommate. "Sorry, Annie! Britta scares me more than a plague of jungle vines."

Abed nodded. "Same. While I'm sure Rachel would forgive a quest, I may only get one spell-breaking kiss per lifetime, and I don't wanna waste it."

Crossing his arms, Jeff asked, "So that's it, you're foisting this off on me?"

From nearby, Annie stomped her foot quite loudly on the stone that had once been linoleum. "Dude," said Troy, "It's not like you don't enjoy kissing Annie. You've done it four or five times."

"It was only twice!" He threw his hands in the air, and turned to their friend, capture on a throne encircled by magic plantlife. "Fine, I'll do it. I'm sorry, Annie, that you've been forced to participate in this stupid LARPER nightmare."

Nonplussed, Annie tugged at the vines around her hands again, then gave Jeff a pleading look. He approached the stone dais, skipping up the four steps until he stood before the giant, wooden chair. Meeting his gaze, she nodded twice, firmly. Jeff laid one hand against her cheek.

"It's traditional to close your eyes," he suggested, and when she did, the responsibility of her trust formed a knot in his chest. Blocking out the swamp and the audience, Jeff leaned in.

At first the kiss was gentle, in keeping with a fairy tale end. A bright glow sparked in the corner of Jeff's vision, and he slammed his eyes shut as silver light exploded outward, encompassing the throne and flooding the cavernous room with the sound of birdsong.

Before he could react, tiny female hands grabbed cheeks, and Annie returned his kiss with the same fervency as the very first time. For Jeff there was no quest, no cafeteria, only Annie with her tongue in his mouth and her fingers raking through his hair.

"Okay, spell's over, that's enough you guys... Jeff! Annie! Oh, come on!"


	28. Put This One On My Tab

**note: **I'm getting a lot of fun 500 word flashfics out of the twice weekly contests over at Milady_Milord comm on Livejournal! If you're a J/A writer, scootch on over there and join in.

**prompt:** "Not only did I enjoy that kiss last night, I was awed by the efficiency behind it." - Cary Grant's John to Grace Kelly's Frances, To Catch a Thief (1955)

* * *

.

******Put This One On My Tab**  


.

"Jeff, wait, what's going on?" asked Annie when he tugged her by the elbow around the corner from their locker.

Jeff leaned over her and hissed, "Sorry, no time, he's coming for me!" He looked her straight in the eyes. "Annie, do you trust me?"

Annie shrugged him off, trying to look more annoyed. Unfortunately, the tiny corner of her psyche that was prone to liking Stefanie Meyer fanfic and cheesy Recency novels meant she wasn't _always_ as put off by Jeff's occasional nosedives into alpha-male behavior as she probably should've been. This time, Jeff also had that particular gleam in his eye that promised intrigue was afoot-with heeled boots on.

"Who's coming?" Jeff looked back the way they'd come, eyebrows peeled together, so she swatted his shoulder to get his attention. "Jeff!"

"Annie, I'm sorry in advance, please don't hate me," he said in a rush. "I'll buy you lunch for a week, just-um...Hide this!"

Before she could ask another question Jeff put his hand on her waist and one behind her head, dipping to give Annie an epic kiss. Startled, it took Annie a moment to react properly. Having gone more than two years since kissing Jeff, she'd forgotten how confident he was at physical contact. His fingers scraped beneath her hair and the hand at her hip felt like an immovable object trapping her against his body. Getting more into it now, Annie opened her mouth, tongue meeting tongue as a few students cat-called around them. Goosebumps ran up her arms and she wondered if her toes might curl like that old movie with Andy Williams.

"WINGER!" roared Pierce's voice, snapping Annie out of her swoon. She began to pull away when Jeff's hands cupped her cheeks and tilted her face even more, deepening the kiss. She felt something hard slip over tongue, pushed from his teeth to hers. Annie had just enough brain cells left to open her mouth wider, wrap her tongue around the object, and shove it against the inside of her cheek before Jeff closed his lips against hers. He leaned in for one last, fleeting touch of her mouth, then dropped his hands and spun to look at their clearly disgruntled friend.

Standing just feet away, Pierce pointed a shaky finger. "Where's my key, Jeff? Pretending to kiss Annie won't save you from my vengeance!"

"What key?" asked Jeff mildly. He shoved his hands in his jean pockets, then thought better of it and pulled one out again, examining his cuticles.

"The key that's going to get me into The History of Ice Cream, obviously!"

With a glance in Annie's direction, he said, "You know about this?" Annie let her eyes move from an overly casual Jeff to the sputtering, indignant Pierce. Inside her cheek, the small shape had a faintly aluminum taste.

Adjusting book bag, she said, "I don't know what's going on here, but I want lunch." Annie held her arm up to be formally escorted. "Milord?"


	29. Eyes On Me

**prompt:** "What if Abed hadn't stopped Jeff and Annie from angrily undressing during the pen incident?"

* * *

.

******Eyes On Me**  


.

It was amazing, and awful, and Abed nearly couldn't believe it was happening. The fiasco unfolding before him was exactly like the scene in the reboot of _Pride & Prejudice _where the rest of the world disappeared around the dancers, except in this case Annie and Jeff were screaming at each other, no one was dancing, and their clothes were about to come off.

They might literally rip their own clothes off in a fit of rage and sexual tension. His friends were living the viewer's dream but were too wrapped up in each other to notice their own meta achievement.

"...if you do, my _pen _will fall out!"

"You precocious little bitch!"

Abed noticed Britta off to one side, her head yo-yoing between the two screaming friends, while Troy and Shirley had their shared "Oh god the white people are going crazy" look. Pierce appeared almost as wrapped up in the scene as Jeff and Annie, who now had their hands on the bottoms of their shirts and their elbows rising. Abed opened his mouth, but the will to speak and avert this disaster between his friends was stymied by a cold, abstract curiosity. Would they do it? Jeff, maybe-he was an exhibitionist, but Annie? Was this all a game of ego or had they genuinely forgotten the rest of the study group was even in the room?

"There's no goddamn pen!" Jeff roared, and then his shirt was gone and he stood in the middle of the group, his muscles heaving like an extra from _Gladiator_ and his eyes digging furiously into Annie's. It was as if Jeff was so focused on not losing his staring contest that he hadn't yet realized Annie was standing in her bra, arms flung, out, breath panting in tandem to his.

"Abed!" said Shirley in growing horror.

"Are we doing this?" choked Troy, eyes bouncing between his two half-naked friends and his four clothed friends.

"Jeff! What the hell," yelped Britta.

"Well there's no pen in these, mister!" Annie shouted, pointing at her breasts, now covered only by a cotton bra. "For all I know you hid it where drug-traffickers put their crack!"

Jeff's voice tipped on its highest arch as he retorted, "You want to see, Annie?" and his hands were on the buttons of his pants when Britta jumped between them.

"Stop it!" she shouted, hands outstretched like a classic damsel. She stared over her shoulder at Jeff, eyes wide and blue. Her voice dropped a level, shifting from encompassing to personal. "_Stop it_."

Abed watched Jeff wake up from a daze, blinking dumbly at Britta. His breath came in shallow draws, his neck was flushed, and he lifted his gaze from Britta to fix on Annie again, just on the other side of the blonde's impromptu body shield. Jeff's eyes raked over his enemy, taking in her pink cheeks, her white neck, her slim tummy. Annie raised her chin, and in violation of all Abed could have predicted about her modesty, she did not cover her chest.

Abed watched Jeff's face go slack, then pale. He wrenched his eyes from Annie as if she were a point of blinding fire, and glanced again at Britta. Abed had trouble identifying the emotions unfolding in that look, and before he had the chance it was over. Jeff's expression went empty as he focused on the carpet of the study room. In the last few seconds everyone had stopped talking, shouting, even breathing. Abed had never seen a tableau get so intense in so short a progression of time. Jeff looked at the floor, Annie looked at Jeff, and Britta was about to say something she definitely shouldn't be allowed to say if she wanted everyone to come out of this as friends.

The silence held, Britta inhaled, and then—

"Tables, we need tables!" declared Shirley. "We need tables _now_ so that we can finish this and go home and think about all the terrible things we've done today."


End file.
